It’s not that Hugo Reinhardt and Patrik Demel deny that American International College’s hockey success is one of the most remarkable Cinderella stories of modern college sports.

They just don’t know what a “Cinderella story” is. This American sports cliche about quintessential underdogs apparently hasn’t reached Sweden or the Czech Republic, where these two AIC juniors call home.

Coach Eric Lang knows what it means, though. As AIC prepares for this weekend’s quarterfinal, best-of-3 Atlantic Hockey conference tournament series against Army - where Lang was an assistant before coming to AIC in 2016 - the story of the Yellow Jackets should inspire anyone who looks at a supposedly hopeless situation and finds reason to believe.

Game 1 of the quarterfinal is Friday night, with Game 2 and (if necessary) Game 3 on the following two nights. The entire series will be played at the MassMutual Center, with AIC rewarded with home ice as the higher seed.

“It’s been a good journey. Our mantra for the program was ‘walk, crawl, run’ - that’s a military saying - and in three years, we’ve gone from hoping to thinking to expecting,” Lang said.

AIC won the regular-season title of Atlantic Hockey, a Division I league that has improved in the last generation and seemed to leave AIC even farther behind than it already had been. Lang’s arrival as coach in 2016 came when the college in Springfield was facing a decision about what to do with a Division I program at an urban, otherwise Division II school.

“The decision was made that we wanted to be in the hockey business. The college’s support has been tremendous. First, we wanted to become competitive, then win more and then, get to where we are now,” said Lang, 43, an AIC graduate who played for the Yellow Jackets in the 1990s.

To understand the meaning of where AIC is now, it helps to know where it’s been. For decades and generations, the Yellow Jackets were to Division I hockey what the Washington Generals were to the Harlem Globetrotters, a hustling but outmatched sports pinata that offered almost certain victory to its opponents.

In 70 years of hockey, AIC’s all-time record entering this season was 665-1,026-97. The Yellow Jackets had some success during coach Bill Turner’s two, non-consecutive stints between 1948 and 1970, and Paul Thornton’s teams were winners in the 1970s, when AIC competed in the old Division II ECAC.

When college’s Division II level collapsed, AIC became a casualty. Its coach from 1984 to 2006 was Gary Wright, whose 605 losses are believed to be an NCAA record by any one coach at the same school.

Around AIC, though, Wright is highly respected for his devotion to keeping the program together at all. The obstacles of Division I made success just about impossible as Wright’s teams faced much larger and more well-endowed programs, while AIC played at smaller, local rinks that spoke to generations gone by.

Lang’s hiring coincided with an institutional change of attitude. Home games were moved to the MassMutual Center. The new coach used his old contacts from the Army hockey program to connect with Europeans who wanted a quality education and a chance to play.

Eleven such players currently dot the roster, truly putting the "I" in AIC. Players like Reinhardt and Demel are pioneering a rising interest in AIC hockey in Europe.

"I just saw the opportunity. I didn’t know the team’s history at first, though I did look it up. But everything is new now, it’s a new start and we are looking forward,'' Reinhardt said.

"Last season did a great job in turning things around, Since the beginning of this season, teams have been ready for us. They know we can play, so this brings more responsibility to us as well, " Demel said.

Lang’s first season ended with an 8-20-8 record, hardly cause for celebration - though not terribly bad, either, by the program’s traditional standards. In 2017-18, though, the Yellow Jackets won 15 games. It was their highest win total since 1993.

This season, the Jackets went 17-9-1 to win the Atlantic Hockey regular-season title. Their 18-15-1 overall record includes losses to a veritable Who’s Who of non-conference opponents that include Quinnipiac, the University of Massachusetts (which has been ranked No. 1 or No. 2 in the nation), Arizona State (yes, they do sponsor hockey there) and Providence.

"If we’d had a little more success out of conference, we’d be right there for an NCAA tournament at-large spot. But when you look at those teams, we didn’t just put our toes in the water,'' Lang said.

AIC must win Atlantic Hockey’s postseason tournament to reach the NCAA field with an automatic bid. Even having opportunity is amazing for a team that, in 2016, was ranked 60th out of 60 Division I teams.

The Yellow Jackets have been ranked as high as No. 21 this year. For the last nine weeks, they have received Top 20 votes.

The question has to be asked. Why did Lang even take a job that gave no previous hint of hope?

"Nothing here was strange or new to me. I always had a plan and didn’t have to learn on the job,'' he said. “We are using the European model, which emphasizes puck possession - we don’t like to just dump it in.”

It’s taken time for people to notice, but maybe, they finally are. This is a story that would make Cinderella blush, even if not everyone knows why a Disney princess belongs in a hockey story.

“We get great support from other teams on campus. We take pride as a flagship program for AIC,” Demel said.

"It’s been a challenge,'' Reinhardt said. “Everything in college is a challenge, but even if we were underdogs before, we’re not anymore. We’re trying to be the best.”